Filed under Communications …

Feb 01 2011
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Communications, Leadership, Nonsense

Two-Fifty Tuesday

I’ve posted on twitter a few times about my love for travel.

I’m getting the travel bug again, bad. More than just a wanton desire for an exotic vacation.

Yesterday I posted where I’d like to travel to for the first time, or go back to. Those places include but not limited to, England, LA, NY, Chicago, Australia, Seattle, Italy, Spain, and Germany.

I really want to go back over seas. It really is incredulous how much I’d love to travel the world, that would be a dream job.

What would you do for a job with your passion for worship design you might ask?

Help the global church find their passion for beauty in worship with media and art and music and to help the communicate effectively internally and externally. Why? because those are my passions.

I catch glimpses of what others are doing in their travels around the world with media in the church and it really begins to stir something in me. Who knows maybe one day this direction will be brought to fruition or maybe it is a dream that will push me and shape me and will blossom into something else entirely. I don’t really know.

I figured this is as good as forum as any to start a dialogue about dreams and passions.

What do you see yourself doing? Where do you see yourself going? Who do you see yourself helping?

What are your passions? dreams? Are they bigger than yourself?

Open Discussion, Go!

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Dec 22 2010
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Bible, Communications, Leadership, Rants

Two-Fifty Tuesday, on Wednesday

I figured since I didn’t post this yesterday I’d back track a day and do a two-fifty post.

This verse is constantly tumbling around in my head. Something I adopted as “my verse” years ago.

“Philippians 2:3 Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.”

That entire chapter is crucial on living the Christian life, on being a church, a staff, a community. What irks me is that so many times within the structure of what we consider God ordained we have people who insist on ignoring being like minding with Christ. People who thrive on rivalry, conceit and placing themselves before others.

I think we could all use a healthy dose of humility in our lives to bring us back down to earth. This applies to every Christian, especially lay leadership and more notably paid leadership. It isn’t our ministry, it isn’t our church, it isn’t our congregation, it isn’t our messages, it isn’t our worship, it isn’t our technology.

That is why in persecuted countries Christ prevails. They have no room for conceitedness. In America we’re lazy physically as well as mentally. Because this well oiled machine we built as church just works, we’re allowed to sit on auto pilot and receive the glory for it. I think maybe we should rethink the modern church structure and start over. The gospel does not change but we certainly need to, the goal is to to become like Christ.

It is not about you.

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Nov 16 2010
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Communications, Creative, Design, Nonsense

Two-Fifty Tuesday

I had a two day weekend last week and I liked it…

-I mean usually I take Saturdays and Mondays as my days off, and don’t get me wrong Mondays are awesome as days off because there is no one out running errands when I am. The biggest problem is that I don’t get two consecutive days to do anything like take some kind of side trip. So that being said, and with @jbenjamin85 leaving I think I’m going to renegotiate my day off.

- I had a great week of long long work days and I went to two shows, Brooke Fraser which melted my face off, seriously killer vocals, and then some other small band on friday that I didn’t even stay for the main show it. Yeah it was that bad.

- Sunday I got my stage and room fully reset for service after a wedding on saturday 2 minutes before it started. Talk about a heart attack and a half waiting to happen!!!

- I’m still trying to find some white space. If you don’t know what I’m talking about see my previous blog.

- I posted a new section next to the About column up top about consulting for stage/scenic design, projection, lighting, sound, creative ideas etc. Hit me up if you’re interested in starting a conversation I love to talk about stuff!

-I’m being a marketer today and it’s odd. I also helped collaborate on a non-standing tower made from masking tape and uncooked noodles to hold a marshmallow.

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Nov 14 2010
2 Comments
Communications, Leadership

White Space

I wrote this for Outspoken a while back and after re-reading it am realizing lately I am struggling with this thought of white space right now. How is your white space, is it all colored in?

Take a second and think about your schedule. If you work in a church you are probably thinking about all of the meetings you have yet to attend, the projects left undone and the ministry hanging out there on the fringes. While the meetings have to happen, the projects have to get completed and ministry above all must be done, you have an obligation to your self. I like to call this obligation, creative white space.

White space should not be considered merely ‘blank’ space — it is an important element     of design which enables the objects in it to exist at all, the balance between positive (or     non-white) and the use of negative spaces is key to aesthetic composition. – Wikipedia

It’s not all that difficult to see a need for balance. Burn out happens in churches too. If you’re not taking a moment out of your week to feed yourself intellectually or spiritually then how are you going to be able to continue to produce at high levels?
Scripture talks about white space in Psalm 46:10 “Be still, and know that I am God.” God has many attributes, God is omnipotent, God is healer, God is father but more relative to us here, God is creative and God is communicator. Now read that verse again, Be still and know that I am creative, or communicator (speaking of God). God desires for us to take a break out of our busy schedules and have some breathing room to create and communicate effectively. That looks different for each person, whether that is 10 minutes in a day or an entire day to remove yourself from meetings, distractions etc. and free yourself up to be inspired.

That healthy white space comes from setting yourself apart with God as well. We’re not going to be effective at our job as creator and communicator if we’re not communicating with the one who started it all. So what in your schedule needs deleted, shifted or boiled down so that you can begin to let yourself doodle, scribble, write, engage, read, observe or listen? Can you put it in a consistent spot or will it have to change each week as the dynamic and flexibility of your passion dictates where a white space will land?

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Jul 22 2010
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Church, Communications, Creative

How Outspoken are you?

Alright all of you Church Communication geeks! I’m sure most of you have heard of a new collaborative effort out there called Outspoken.

I’m a little pumped about this personally, because I get to be a part of this endeavor to help us all communicate the same incredible message of Christ to an ever changing culture.

The other exciting part about this book is it will be easy to read. With over 50 authors contributing you will get every style of writing and communications knowledge you can imagine in one handy dandy notebook (ok i stole that from blues clues, sue me). If one piece doesn’t resonate with you, skip on over to the next section and get something a little different.

I don’t want to keep you long because you’re out there trying to communicate. I hope you’ll go visit the facebook link above and “like” the book, tell your friends and follow it on twitter. As it comes closer to release more information will be available on the book, its authors and all of it’s awesome content.

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Jul 22 2010
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Church, Communications

Your local val-u-mart

The Importance of Value.

How many times in meeting with others have you walked away from the conversation thinking you had a good idea of what needed to be done or not be done, only to find out how incredibly wrong you were?

In ministry I think we forget that other people have a different view of what is important or valuable to them and their ministry. I’ve had numerous occasions where in a meeting, something was briefly brought up that would have fallen into my area of ministry but it was stated like a suggestion. So like many suggestions do for most of us, it gets filed. What I didn’t know is that suggestion was actually more of a mandate. I was not understanding what that person was valuing for ministry at that moment. Because I didn’t see it as valuable or important I didn’t act on it directly.

This isn’t something that is easy to do, but our focus needs to shift just a little bit in order to be a little more sensitive to, not only our valuable items but things others see important as well.

If we’re going to communicate more effectively we need to learn to listen more effectively too.

oh and if you’re waiting on more creative stuff from me I’ve got my magazines full and I’m ready to shoot I’ve just got to find time to unload it all on here! my guess is after camp you’re going to see quite a few blog posts on some recent creative endeavors.

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May 07 2010
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Communications, Leadership

The Me In Team

When you’re part of a team generally the feeling you want to create for them is inclusion.  You want everyone to feel comfortable to share ideas, help out pull their weight and feel that when they’re in need they can ask for help. God didn’t intend us to work solo and he outlined that throughout scripture.

If you feel left out of a team you instantly begin to feel like your opinions don’t count. You distance yourself from your team, and before long your sense of worth and identification within that group dwindles. Ideas can spur on other ideas no matter how ridiculous or not thought out they are, if you look at the idea giver like they’re a royal idiot chances are they’re going to stop giving ideas. You quash their creativity.

Unfortunately many leaders treat their team as if it’s all about the ‘me’. Momma always told me there is no i in team but everybody forgot to warn us about the me. Because they are all about the me, they forget about the rest of the team and then the rest of the team eventually moves on looking for that sense of inclusion.

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